


an alignment of interests

by spoke



Category: Books of the Raksura - Martha Wells
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-15
Updated: 2017-06-15
Packaged: 2018-11-14 07:54:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,223
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11203668
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spoke/pseuds/spoke
Summary: Many many thanks to my last minute beta, Morbane. The story is much better for her help, and any remaining mistakes are my own.





	an alignment of interests

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Nary](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nary/gifts).



> Many many thanks to my last minute beta, Morbane. The story is much better for her help, and any remaining mistakes are my own.

Of all possible outcomes of Opal Night’s visit to Emerald Twilight before the war with the Fell began, no one would have expected the meeting of Shadow and Malachite - except possibly Clime, elder of Arbora of Emerald Twilight. He’d know Shadow longer than any of them by now, and had every reason to believe he’d be involved in this mess one way or another, but even he hadn’t expected this.

As a retired first consort, Shadow didn’t even have to be involved in the formalities if he chose not to be; those duties now fell to Tempest’s consort Mist. But he had insisted, and no one in the court was comfortable saying no. Which is to say that he had stared at them, in that way of his that made it feel as if you were an awkward fledgling interrupting adult conversation, and they’d just quietly given in. 

Which, as Whistle pointed out later, was something that seemed to happen to people who tried to argue with Malachite as well. Though her stare had the more aggressive edge you would expect out of a queen, it was still characterized by that sort of unnerving calm. Eevn though Whistle was the best of them at sorting out matches between queens and consorts, this wasn’t really comforting. At least she’d said it where neither one of them could hear her.

It might have stopped there, what with an entire war to plan, and all the arguing and posturing that came with such things, except that there hadn’t been nearly as much of that as one would expect given the seriousness of the situation, and that, Clime felt, was entirely Shadow’s fault. He couldn’t really blame him, since consorts were supposed to be diplomats as much as the leaders of the Arbora, but they usually did it behind the scenes, not by practically allying with a foreign queen in front of the whole court. Between the two of them, the sheer weight of their personalities had silenced half the arguments anyone had about sending warriors to fight the Fell. 

Which was a relief, honestly, because some queens could be entirely too invested in their maneuvering and this really wasn’t the time. He’d honestly thought for a moment that they were going to have an encounter with Opal Night that didn’t turn into one shade of disaster or another.

And then Shadow had offered to make Malachite tea when they returned. In front of the entire court, in front of _Tempest_ , who seemed to take it as a personal insult even if she’d controlled herself admirably well. It was going to be all anybody talked about for months, providing they survived.

Clime was starting to suspect that Shadow was going to turn out to be a line-grandfather, and the potential of merging that line with Malachite’s was certainly... interesting. And something he was glad would be happening elsewhere, if anything came of it. 

* * *

It had been a terrible relief to hear that Malachite had returned. He hadn’t expected to have any interest in queens after Ice passed, nor any reason to expect one to have an interest in him, being both taken already and an older consort. But Malachite was quite as unusual in her own way as Moon was; it had been easy to see where he got the strength to survive as a solitary. 

After the initial pleasantries, and the shooing off of nosy young consorts who ought to have known better, Shadow put down his cup and made sure he’d caught Malachite’s eyes. “I suppose I could wait for you to say something? But I suspect we might be here until I start to fade, which would be a terrible waste of time.”

Malachite’s tail gave one slow lash, but there was an amusement in her eyes, he thought. “So. Is it true that you never took another consort after the eastern colony?”

“Diplomatic.” She replied, dryly, making a show of studying the glaze on her cup. Interestingly, it did seem as if she appreciated it, and wasn’t just looking at something other than him. Though Ember had said that Shade, the half-Fell consort, was an artist... which was strange, given that Fell created nothing. Maybe the Aeriat weren’t makers of things simply because they were encouraged not to be, by the ferocious appetite the Arbora had for their crafts. 

She was looking at him again, and he was not going to continue feeling like he was having his first meeting with an unattached queen. “I didn’t want another consort after Dusk.” She shrugged, her spines rippling. “Possibly I didn’t want children after the Fell attack, after seeing what had happened to my consort and my Arbora.” 

She gave Shadow time to take that in, to process the thought of all those children and trying to raise them to be Raskura; but he had thought of that before and had suspected this might be the case. Living among half-Fell... well, Ember had spoken well of Shade, said that he was every bit the traditional consort Moon was not. Except, of course, for the ways in which he decidedly wasn’t. Shadow reached out, minutely adjusting the angle of the teapot. “Yet the children you have are a credit to your court. It seems... a waste, not to give others a chance to appreciate them.” 

She leaned forward, placing the cup directly in his hands. “Now that we’ve survived this... an alliance between our courts would be an interesting pursuit, I take it?” 

He smiled, and suspected it wasn’t an entirely friendly smile, given that he was imaging the conversations he’d be having with Tempest and Mist about this. Let alone the Arbora leaders. “I’m sure both our courts’ bloodlines would be suitably enriched.” 

* * *

After the war, alliances started to spread more extensively across the Reaches, and histories and knowledge became a far more valued trade item. Opal Night had such an extensive library compared to many younger courts, and Emerald Twilight was so very competitive about... everything that could possibly be turned into a competition, that it wasn’t all that difficult to make trips back and forth, for a consort whose queen had been the ruling one before she passed. Though neither Shadow nor Malachite had any illusions that anyone was fooled by this, it suited those who wanted things to be handled according to custom.

Though as Malachite pointed out when they’d gotten more comfortable with each other, it wasn’t as if no queen ever took a consort that had already been taken. It was just that it was the two of them that was making everyone who knew them uncomfortable. With the possible exception of Stone, who sometimes seemed to regard them as a couple of fledglings. Shadow wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction of reacting to that, however - they had it on good authority, both Moon and Ember, that this was how he treated everyone. Besides, they both suspected that he was curious to see how their clutches turned out. 

Now if he and Umber between them could just get Onyx to stop acting like a fledgling poking her siblings to get them to shift, things might settle down as much as life was ever likely to in this court, and they could get around to having him formally join it.


End file.
